Shin'ichi Yanagisawa

Shin'ichi Yanagisawa is the kind of guy who makes you feel vaguely underachieving — born in Tokyo in 1932, he spent his career doing, well, basically everything: acting on screen, lending his voice to characters, recording songs, writing lyrics. That's four full-time crafts most people never even attempt one of. What gets me is that this wasn't some gimmick or desperate hustle — in the postwar Japanese entertainment world, that breadth meant he had genuine chops across the board, because audiences and directors of that era had zero patience for dilettantes. Voice acting especially demands a kind of quiet mastery, the ability to carry a scene on nothing but tone and timing. I don't know every role he took on, but a career that long, that varied, held together that neatly? That's not luck — that's a craftsman who loved the work more than the spotlight. He passed in March 2022 at 89. A real one.

Shin'ichi Yanagisawa (1932–2022) was a Japanese actor, voice actor, singer, and lyricist born in Tokyo. Active across multiple entertainment disciplines, he demonstrated rare versatility spanning stage and screen performance, vocal work, and songwriting. He passed away on March 24, 2022, leaving behind a career that touched several facets of postwar Japanese entertainment.

Name (English)

Shin'ichi Yanagisawa

Name (Japanese)

柳澤愼一

Reading

やなぎさわ しんいち

Born

December 19, 1932 – March 24, 2022

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Monkey (申)

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

Actor / Voice Actor / Singer / Lyricist

Motto

Private

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9F%B3%E6%BE%A4%E6%84%BC%E4%B8%80

Tags

• From Tokyo
• Actor
• Voice Actor
• Singer

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.